Andrew Martin - Murder At Deviation Junction

What the hell had he meant? That Shillito would come after me with a gun, and that I ought to be ready? That the Travelling Club business would end in bullets fired? Or was he saying that, since I was done for as a copper, my only remaining hope was to take the King's Shilling?

I would take another bloody drink, at any rate.

Chapter Eighteen

The Ebor Hall was packed and very brightly lit. I'd have felt a little dizzy entering it even if I'd not had such a peculiar day and drunk the Rifle League's brain-dusters.

I could not see the wife, but I could see her hand in almost everything. The holly that hung from the gas mantles and all about the stage - that was her doing; and the piano was not in its alcove but at the side of the stage - so she'd managed to get that shifted. A lady was playing it, and ladies were in fact doing everything, especially collecting up papers or passing out cups of tea by the gross. I knew what was happening: the spelling bee had just come to an end. Half the ladies were sitting on clusters of chairs under gas mantles and half were moving about. All the ladies were talking, and it was all to do with the Movement and its stores.

'Have you seen the new York store? Plate glass and electric light to show off the loaves.'

'There are better things in the old store, I think.'

'We had a very nice visit to the warehouse ...'

I caught sight of one of the ladies looking at my suit and at my bandaged hand; she turned to point me out to the woman sitting next to her, but she was talking fourteen to the dozen with a third woman. I walked on through the hall; half wanting to see the wife, half not. I could trust myself to speak; the only trouble was that I was not as concerned about my appearance as I knew I ought to be . . . and the only other problem was that my head seemed a long way from my shoulders. As I looked about, the piano came to a stop, and that somehow left me feeling as though every woman in the place was eyeing me, and not in a way I would have liked; but in fact they were all now facing the stage, where a very well-spoken woman was calling for quiet.

She was bonny-looking, though fifty years old at least. I liked the way her grey hair set off her dark eyes. She was upper class, but a socialist - there were more of that sort about than you might have thought, and they were given to speech-making

She was making a speech now.

'Co-operation is not merely about buying goods at a community store, and then waiting for the dividend . . .'

'I wonder if she takes cock?' said a man who was suddenly alongside me. He lurched as I turned to look at him. He was a sight drunker than me, and had evidently been given up as a bad job by whatever woman had brought him.

'We must apply our principles of co-operation to every aspect of our existence . . .'

'Your missus in this show?' asked the drunk.

I nodded.

'Mine 'n all. She knows the price of grate polish in every Co-op in Yorkshire, but I say, "Buy the bloody grate polish; clean the bloody grate.'"

Behind him I saw another of the few men in the place, and after a moment of disbelief I realised that it was Wright, the police- office clerk. He must have a wife who was a Co-operator. He was coming up to me fast; and curious as usual.

'What the heck are you doing here?'

Before I could answer, he said, 'I've been hunting for you all afternoon. The man Bowman from London - he's been -'

But the wife had stepped in between me and Wright, and was blocking him out.

'Hello, baby,' I said.

She sort of slid away, and the woman who'd made the speech had replaced her. She was holding out her hand to me. In shaking hands, she had to touch the bloody bandage.

'Avril Gregory-Gresham,' she was saying. 'Lydia's told me so much about you.'

The wife, slightly behind her now, close to Wright, was looking murder at me. It made her look beautiful in a different way. But Mrs Gregory-Gresham didn't seem quite so bothered about the state of me. She was more like Wright - a curious type, and she frowned quite prettily as she said, 'You look rather -'

'Pardon my appearance,' I broke in; and it was as if a different man was speaking. 'I've been in a fight.'

The wife was still there; but I did not like to meet her eye. Mrs Gregory-Gresham was frowning more deeply.

'I am a policeman,' I explained

'Yes,' she said, 'I know that,' and she was leaning towards me, not away, which was good.

'The fight,' I said. 'It was much -'

I couldn't speak for a moment.

'Much of a muchness ?' suggested Mrs Gregory-Gresham.

I had meant to say that what had happened had been much less bad than it looked or sounded - or something.

'Are you quite all right?' she said, and the fact of the matter was that she was trying to help. 'Forgive me, but you do smell rather strongly of -'

'Yes,' I said quickly, 'carbolic.'

'You were arresting a wrongdoer?' she asked, and I at least had enough off to say, 'That's just it. I am investigating a murder.'

'The man you arrested was a murderer ? But this is fascinating.'

'The business was pursuant to a murder,' I said, or that's what I'd meant to say, but I'd never even tried to speak that word sober, so I suppose it came out wrongly. As Mrs Gregory-Gresham looked on, I fished in my pocket for the photograph of the Travelling Club. As it emerged, I saw that it had become quite crumpled after the adventures of the day, and I thought of it as being like the calling card of a man who travels in some goods that nobody much wants.

'Most of these men are certainly dead,' I said, 'and so is the man who took this picture. Nobody knows why.'

Least of all me, I thought.

'You think,' she said, taking the photograph, 'that one of them killed the others.' 'Yes,' I said,'- or that someone else did.'

There was quite a long pause, after which Mrs Gregory- Gresham asked:

'What is your surmise about the murderer?'

'That he did not want this picture seen, that he will stop at nothing ... that he is not a member of the Co-operative Movement.'

She laughed at that, but only for a second.

'But I know this man,' she said.

She was indicating the young man.

'Phoebe - that's my daughter - she knew him at the University. They had a jolly at the river; a day of . . . rowing, you know, and she introduced me to him.'

'What's his name?'

'I can't remember, but I know the face; oh, now I know it. He was from the north,' she said in a rush, 'Middlesbrough way - and he'd won a prize for speaking.'

'Speaking about what?'

'Anything. It's the hair that I recognise, and he was sweet on Phoebe, I distinctly had that impression. I also think she was rather taken with him, although of course she never let on.'

A long bar of silence; then the piano started up again, just as Avril Gregory-Gresham said, 'His family had a place in Filey - on the Crescent, and they would summer there. Well, we have a place there too, and Phoebe had been in hopes of seeing him over the -'

'Last summer?' I put in.

'Last summer, yes.'

'She looked in the register every week. It's a ridiculous thing, but any fairly well-to-do visitor is listed in the local paper there.'

'Did he not come?' I said, thinking how strange the words sounded.

Avril Gregory-Gresham shook her head.

'He did not. I will speak to Phoebe, and I will get his name to you directly. I will speak to the girl next week, and pass on the name to Lydia, who will give it to you.'

I took this to mean that she would after all be giving the job of secretary or typewriter to the wife, who for the present stood in the background, still looking very doubtful. A moment later there was a switch, and in the fast-changing strangeness of the Co-op ladies' social, the wife was before me.